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Disclaimer:
The names of all characters contained here-in are the property of Jerry
Bruckheimer Films, CBS, etc. No infringments of these copyrights are intended,
and are used here without permission.
The conversation, or argument, that had happened moments earlier still hung in the air. Martin, for his part, was not particularly affected. By now he was used to Sam pulling this when she didn't get her way on something that was bothering her. Most of the time he gently reined her back in. But today he just wasn't in the mood. He didn't really care that Danny knew. He didn't really care much about the whole issue to begin with. But his preference was two-fold: For one thing, he wanted to stop actively trying to hide what he and Sam shared and secondly, he wished she would get an attitude replacement. Maybe it was just her time of the month. Okay, he wasn't that bad a guy and knew her feelings towards what had become a huge issue in their relationship were deeper than that. She seemed to have a profound aversion to the entire subject of "going public" as she had called it. He had called it something much less dramatic. Sam always was one for drama. The truth was, when his phone rang, it was a welcome reprieve. He would have severely disliked being stuck at the table with a woman who was currently sulking and generally being obnoxious. He watched her as he talked on the phone. She was making faces. It generated conflicting thoughts. On the one hand he was pissed at her for acting like a child over the whole thing. On the other hand he found it kind of amusing. As much as he hated to admit it, she was sexy when she was pissed. And she was funny. Of course, if he dared even smile at her, he'd probably face Hell's wrath. He knew how to deal with Petulant Sam. And he also knew that he wasn't really acting much better. But there was only so much she could expect him to take. And he knew her mood would blow over soon enough. She marched straight to the elevator, apparently thinking that the faster she walked, the higher chance of losing him so they wouldn't have to share an elevator. He shook his head in amused disbelief. For once, it was waiting on their floor. The door slid open almost immediately. She saw him coming, her finger hovering over the Close button, but moving to press the Open instead. She narrowed her eyes at her subconscious action and slammed the garage floor button as he entered. "Christ, Sam." "What?" By the tone of her voice she was still angry but trying to cover it up. When she talked like this, she almost sounded as if she wouldn't mind crying. He couldn't tell whether it was frustration or distress that caused it. He merely shook his head in response, letting out a long sigh. The elevator began its descent down 23 storeys. She gave up a similar sigh, leaning back against the oak panelling of the elevator wall. Martin stepped closer to her and took her arm, pulling her closer to him. She resisted weakly, letting out another resigned sigh. Quite unexpectedly, Martin pounced on her, kissing her solidly for a brief moment. When he pulled back, she was looking at him with a mixture of shock and satisfaction. A small smirk crept along her lips as she cocked her head to the side in curiosity. He offered no more than a shrug and stared at the opposite wall. The scowl returned to her face and they stood in silence as the elevator descended lower.
"Why is it so important for you to tell people?" she finally
asked. She looked flustered again, as she always did when that question was posed. There was a jolt and a chime as the elevator doors opened to allow other employees to join them. The conversation was over again. They said nothing to each other when the elevator arrived at the garage floor and they began walking to the car. It was still up to one of them to answer the question. Sam's heels echoed in the quiet underground garage. It wasn't any task to keep up with her brisk pace but she was avoiding him. Martin flicked the remote and the car beeped. Sam stopped in her tracks and turned to him. "I'm driving," she stated plainly and held out her hand for the keys. "Give me the keys." "I'm driving."
"No, just give me the keys." She wiggled her fingers impatiently.
Her face showed no hint of humour at their bickering. He reluctantly handed
her the keys and walked around to the passenger side. "Shut up, Martin. You know I can drive." He shrugged and stared out the windshield. "I know you can drive. Just not well." She pulled the door shut behind her with a hard slam. She looked at him straight on. He refused to meet her eyes, continuing to stare into the parking lot. "I've had just about enough of your wisecracks about my driving. And now definitely is not the time to decide to mock me." She clenched the steering wheel tightly, ignoring the fact that they should be getting to the subway station to apprehend a viable suspect. "Fine, Sam. You tell me when it's okay to speak again. You call the shots, just like you always do." He leant back in the seat and settled in for the ride. She angrily turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the parking lot. The
car skid to a quick stop at a red light that Sam had thought she could
run. Technically she could have, but dealing with a hotshot traffic cop
would just slow them down further. Martin kept any comment he may have
made to himself. The sulking and silent treatment that they were giving
each other was getting ridiculous. She tapped her fingers anxiously on
the steering wheel. He glanced at her hands. "Does it bother you?" she asked as if she got distinct pleasure out of annoying him. He sighed. "Nevermind." He returned to staring out the window. She stared at him suspiciously. "What?" "I'm tired of fighting with you. Especially since you just seem to enjoying it now. I'm sure as hell not enjoying myself." Their eyes met for the first time since getting into the car. They lapsed into silence and Sam looked out at the intersection. "Besides," he continued quietly, "I think you have mental problems." She whipped around to glare at him but he had a smile on his face. Her demeanour softened and a smile of her own replaced the almost permanent scowl. "I guess you're contagious," she responded, grinning. He chuckled, their previous argument forgotten for the time being. She pushed him playfully. He grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. The light turned to green. She tugged her hand away from him and put it on the wheel. "That's right, you need both hands to drive," he mocked. She let out a long sigh. "Almost. You were almost close to getting back in my good books again." She smiled as she wove quickly through the traffic. "Hey, it's not my fault you spend far too much time playing Grand Theft Auto on my Playstation and think that kind of driving is actually possible in real life." "You know, I am going to shoot you soon."
"If it saves me from the ride back, I'm looking forward to it." Their new suspect was now safely in custody. As the police ran through the paperwork, Jack granted the team a quick break to go home and rest for a couple hours. He and Viv were still at DSS and Danny was scheduled to be at the prison in a few hours. But Samantha and Martin were given reprieve until the paperwork went through. It was an awkward moment after the events of the day when Martin approached Sam at her desk. "You want to go now?" She looked up at him. "I'm really tired." She seemed hesitant and didn't want to spend the night with him. "I know. I'll drop you off and you can nap for a few hours," he offered, not wanting to be presumptuous after the argument today. "Sounds like a plan," she said quietly, standing and pulling on her coat. He waited at the elevator for her. Outside her apartment, Martin pulled parallel to the sidewalk. They sat in silence for a while. "I think you should park the car," she mumbled.
He said nothing but pulled around to visitor parking, finding a space
easily and shutting off the engine. Some of the tension that had been
present during the argument was beginning to resurface. It seemed to come
out of nowhere. Sam quickly scrambled out of car and smacked the door
closed. She shuffled impatiently as Martin slowly crawled out. She glared at him as they quickly strode into her apartment building. Roger, the superintendent was still awake, mopping out the slush from the entryway. It seemed like an odd time to be cleaning but Martin had come to realize that nothing was normal anymore, especially if Sam was even slightly related to it. Roger held open the door as Sam marched through with a strange grunt-ish noise of thanks. Martin smiled, slightly embarrassed.
"Troubles with the wife?" Martin quickly followed Sam to the stairs, with a smirk remaining on his face. At least one person in the world wasn't unhappy with him, even if it was just the superintendent of his girlfriend's building. As they climbed the stairs, it occurred to Martin that that word, "girlfriend", might be the root of his problems. Ever since Roger had realized Martin was a recurring visitor, he had teased the agents about it. His endearing use of "wife" didn't bother Martin at all. He knew he and Sam were about as far from husband and wife that two people who were sleeping together could get. Roger seemed to particularly like the term since it made Sam uneasy. But she too knew it was just in good fun. Martin honestly wasn't sure if he'd marry Sam, even 5 years down the road if they ever got that far. It just didn't seem like a possibility. But it had been Roger's use of the word that prompted Martin's mind to start analyzing his relationship with Sam. Although he remembered a conversation he and Sam had regarding the whole issue of what they were to each other, they had never actually come to a conclusion. Nothing sounded right. She wasn't his girlfriend, at least not in the widely understood definition of the word. She was his lover, but that sounded too strange, almost as if that word was reserved for something much more substantial, something more. She was his partner, but that sounded to professional. That's what they all were at work. It blurred the boundaries too much. Fuck-buddies? Well, unfortunately, that seemed like the most realistic, as crude as that sounded. They were two people who liked to have sex with each other after work. It wasn't much of an emotional investment, at least from what he could tell. They were just incredibly physically compatible. Martin liked to think it was more than that considering how long they had been together and the fact they seemed to be getting closer. When they were alone, they were different, especially late at night when they lay together in the dark. It was something special but he couldn't pinpoint what was different. But it still didn't fit into any category they had thought of. Before he could come to a definite conclusion, they had reached her apartment and she had quickly pushed open the door. She was acting strangely. Why had she invited him to stay if she wasn't actually talking to him? She tossed her coat over the couch and made her way to her bedroom. He shuffled around uncomfortably, trying to decide what to do. He hung both their coats up in the small closet and took a seat on the sofa to wait for her to emerge from hiding. When she finally came out of her room, she was in an old pair of grey sweatpants and a long-sleeved pink tee. She looked cozy and calm, but Martin could tell by the look in her eyes that her mind was whirling. He loosened his tie. "Are you planning on talking to me tonight?" he tried to ask with casual humour. However, she didn't seem to appreciate it and glared as she walked across the room. "I am talking to you," she grumbled. Martin sighed and ran a hand over his face. Sometimes she acted like an ox, stubborn and not too bright. "Sam, come here." She stood and watched him suspiciously. He patted the sofa cushions beside him. She made a show of reluctantly dawdling over to him. Dropping into the cushions, she mimicked his previous sigh. His arm slipped around her, pulling her into his arms. She yawned and curled up against him. His kissed her forehead softly and leaned his cheek against the crown of her head.
"Are you feeling ok?" he asked softly. She moved away from him then to stare into his eyes. She wondered if this was The Talk. She nervously anticipated the inevitable lines that would follow. It only made sense after the fight today. Maybe telling people was really important to him. For once, she wasn't ready to hear the words that signalled the end. Martin was supposed to be different. He was supposed to be patient and forgiving. Against her will, her stomach began to work itself into a knot and she felt a nauseous lump somewhere in her throat. She mentally pleaded for it to go away. As she contemplated his next words, she felt the unbidden tears pricking the sides of her eyes. No. This wasn't supposed to happen. She was strong and capable. Men weren't supposed to have an effect of her. Well, Jack did. But Martin wasn't Jack. Martin was just a colleague who she'd been sleeping with for... She tried to figure out how many months it had been. 8? 10? 9? That was ridiculous. She hadn't noticed she'd been wringing her hands together until Martin gently put a hand over hers.
"Sam." "Okay, today has been," he paused as he tried to find the right word, "Difficult." She nodded. "I can't deal with this everyday. I need to know where you stand. I know where I stand, and so do you. The thing that's up in the air is you. I have no idea what's going on in your head lately. One minute you're acting like a teenager in love, the next you're the reincarnated female version of Kublai Khan." "I'm just moody. You know that." She frowned at his analogy. "I'm not a bloodthirsty dictator." "Actually Genghis Khan-." "Don't. Just don't. It's not important." "Sure. Maybe you can answer the easier question then: Why do you want to keep us so secret?" She let out a long huff and grimaced. "That's not easier. It's all the same thing." "You're avoiding the answer. Look, all I know is that all day today this issue has hung around and made life very challenging. Unless we do something about it, that tension's just going to rear its ugly head again tomorrow." She said nothing but was in complete agreement. Something had to be said or done. "Well, since you are not helping, I'll start," he suggested. "I want to be myself with you, all the time. I think you seriously misinterpret what I mean about 'telling everyone'. I'm not saying that I want to make a scene. I just want a little leeway." "I know." "Well?" "I don't want the questions. 'So are you guys, like, going out?', 'So is he your boyfriend?' I don't know those answers and I don't like being put on the spot like that." Martin nodded but said nothing. He couldn't think of how to respond. He didn't know how he'd handle those questions either. Sam shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She didn't like it when Martin didn't say anything. She was used to him always prompting or talking to her. When he was being quiet, or giving her monosyllabic responses as he had earlier in the day, she knew something was very wrong. "You don't want Jack to know." It wasn't a question. She pursed her lips and rolled the idea around in her mind. Was that the reason? Or did she really just not want to be the office gossip again? "'Cause if Jack knows, then you two would really be over. You would have moved on. You want to keep him dangling." "Martin," she started but didn't continue. Her voice held a tone of warning with the direction of his speech. "Sam," he imitated. She closed her eyes, wishing it would all just disappear and they could go back to how they were before it started to get serious. She hated serious. A warning flag went up in her brain. Did she really just call it serious? It seemed her subconscious was slightly more informed than her conscious mind. Did she really just call it serious? She repeated the question and the possible meaning over and over. Martin could see that she was withdrawing again. She tended to do this when she didn't want to face something. Sam had two reactions to unwelcome information: One, she would close off and say little. This was her favourite tactic in relationships. Two, she would talk, a lot. Ramble, in fact. Although her rambling didn't make much sense, at least it was a visible reaction that he could interpret. "It's not fair. To me, to you, to Jack. You and me, we're something. You and Jack were something. The way you're acting about us makes me wonder if maybe it's just part of a larger scheme to change the tenses in those previous statements." She groaned out loud. "Shut up, Martin. Honestly! I'm getting tired of this insecure bullshit. Do you honestly think I would still be here if I wanted Jack? I would have dumped you a long time ago. You only bring Jack up when you feel like starting an argument over your own anxieties. We never discuss that otherwise. You never ask me. Sometimes...", she trailed off as her brain spun ahead of her voice. She paused and resumed, "You have never been the subject of office gossip about your sex life, and so you wouldn't know what it's like! It's not something I enjoy. Just don't pretend you know what's going to happen and what it would be like if everyone knows. I don't want that. I don't want Jack and I don't want you constantly griping about my past and how it reflects on the future." "I don't think you know what you want." Sam felt like kicking him in the head. He always seemed to think he knew her. Maybe he did, but not everything about her. She looked over him curiously. He ran a hand through his hair. This was about the last conversation he wanted to have at 3 am. "All I know is that it is 3 in the morning. I'm tired. You're tired. We've both been on edge a lot of today and this is apparently not fixing anything. It might just be making things worse. I don't know anymore. But you do seem to be the one in charge, choosing when to stop and go, steering us all over the damn place until I have no idea where the hell we are anymore." He continued talking about something. Sam wasn't paying attention anymore. She was distracted by her own personal epiphany she had only moments earlier. They were serious? When was her last serious relationship? She wanted to say Jack but it didn't seem right. They fucked for 5 months. The feelings had been intense, but so had the secrecy and the overall forbidden nature of the affair. She didn't think you could call something serious if there was never any commitment from either party, or even any potential for commitment. Fred? No. Not at all. Kellar? Nope. She ran through the list of men she'd been with in recent years. All of them had one glaring similarity: they were fuck-buddies. Not boyfriends, not husbands. They were just guys looking for a good time and maybe someone to listen to them as they pour their souls out. And she never really listened. "We're serious," she stated plainly, interrupting his discourse. He was caught off-guard. "What?" She stared straight ahead as if in a daze. "Us. You and me are serious. That's what we are." "We are?" His tone sounded unsure yet had a strong hint of hope. He almost smiled. "Danny said that me and you are 'something'. I said we were cause I didn't know what else we could be. But then I was just thinking. We're something more serious than just <i>'something'</i>. Maybe we don't need to define what we are the way you want to. I like it being like this. It's different then anything I've known and it feels right. So why should that change with a label? 'Something serious'. It sounds so vague but so right to me." "It is vague. That's why it's difficult." She shrugged nonchalantly. "Well, I offered to make it slightly more precise but if you don't want to take it, then fine. Just stop whining about it." "Samantha Spade, you are a pain in the ass." This time he allowed a smile to sneak onto his face. She pretended not to notice and tried her hardest not to react with a grin of her own, failing at the last second. He stood up and stretched slowly. "C'mon," he held out his hands to pull her up. "Naptime." She took his offering and followed him to her bedroom. It took him little time to strip down to his boxers and pull on a t-shirt that he kept in a drawer of her dresser. She crawled under the blankets and waited for him. When the lights were out, they settled down to sleep for a few hours. Unsure of Sam's receptiveness tonight, Martin lay quietly on his back as she tossed and turned to try and get comfortable. After about ten minutes of her squirming, he rolled over to look at her. "Something wrong?" "I can't sleep," she complained, throwing a pillow off the bed. "I figured that out. Are you still thinking about today?" She mumbled an inaudible reply and kicked her feet from under the blanket. Martin reached over, kneading her neck with his free hand. The touch elicited a small moan in appreciation. "It's just too quiet. I'm tired of hearing myself think," she admitted. "I want to watch a movie." He glanced at the alarm clock on her beside, trying to squint out the time. Of course she had to have one of those old-fashioned ones. "We have about 2 hours to sleep at this point," he estimated, with a tired groan. "Please?" she mock-whimpered. Without answering her, he rolled out of bed and walked over to her side of the bed. Reaching down he slid his arms under her, lifting her clear of the mattress and dragging her sheets and duvet behind them. She snatched a pillow as she was being lifted. Letting out a small yelp, she tightened her grip around his neck. He dumped her unceremoniously on the living room sofa, smirking to himself and she grappled with the tangle of sheets. When she had propped the pillow up and sorted out the blankets, she looked up at him with confusion. "Aren't you going to join me?" She sounded curious with a twinge of need in her voice. His eyes ran over the length of the couch. "As wonderful an option as that is, you do realize that we're two fully grown adults? One of us is bound to end up on the floor by the time we wake up." She didn't say anything but pushed the back cushions onto the floor, making more room on the surface of the sofa. It was Martin's turn to be confused. "There. Now stop making excuses, Fitzgerald, and get your scrawny ass down here beside me." He gave her a wounded look in jest as he crawled behind her and tightly wrapped an arm around her. She reached for the remote, switching the channel to a late night movie. He leant forward and placed a soft kiss behind her ear, his fingers splaying across her stomach. She awkwardly rolled to face him. It was these times when they were alone, that it seemed so much simpler. She kissed him softly, enjoying the fact that it was just the two of them, on her couch. The rest of the world didn't factor into this moment. They could forget that tomorrow they would probably get upset with each other about the various issues in their lives, primarily the definition of things that maybe needn't be defined. They never did resolve the problem of what was going to happen at work, whether their colleagues would be informed, whether he could place a hand on her arm without her paranoia swinging into overdrive. There would still be tension between them because of these issues until it was resolved, one way or the other. But none of that mattered at the moment. He smiled at her and she returned the gesture. She rolled over and he spooned against her back, as her eyes slipped shut. It didn't matter who was in the driver's seat. They would hopefully be okay. End. 'Cause
when you showed me myself I became someone else |